English doctor euthanised patients for years with impunity

In Hampshire, Dr Jane Baron took “the liberty of ‘routinely’ prescribing opiates (diamorphine, the technical term for heroin) beyond reason to patients who did not need them”. She did so with the complicity of the hospital’s specialists, who did not intervene. Nurses and pharmacists were also complicit, and "gave the doses knowingly".

This is a case of “almost institutionalised euthanasia”, with “at least 456 deaths and perhaps 200 more between 1989 and 2000”.

In 2009, “Dr Opiate” appeared before a disciplinary tribunal. She was convicted the following year of “repeated professional misconduct relating to 12 patients who died”. But never “was she charged with a crime”. And in 2003, the Department of Health opposed the release of a report that concluded that there had been cases of euthanasia.

Families have been fighting for years “to have the facts acknowledged”. Photos of the victims were published by the press on Thursday. Twenty years later, they have just received a public apology “on behalf of the NHS and government”.